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US Elections: Why We Must Be Radical - Professor Butch Ware
The Thinking Muslim
207K subscribers
Nov 1, 2024
The US elections are nearly upon us, and we have all be subject to the empty words and rhetoric of of the two main political parties. The Green Party has gained a lot of traction, especially amongst the countries small but very important Muslim community. I have already interviewed the leader of the Greens, Dr Jill Stein. But Today I have the pleasure to speak with Professor Butch Bilal Ware, its Vice Presidential nominee.
Professor Butch Ware is a lifelong activist and educator specializing in the history of empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution. For the past two decades, Ware has put scholarship in service of the people, especially in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as the George Floyd murder in 2020.
Transcript
Introduction
somehow you're watering down your radicalism but wear is too radical for the green party
I was stopped for driving W black 17 times before I reached my 18th birthday an officer
drew his service weapon and pointed it at my face so we need to In This Moment organize for maximal
political power we never condemn the resistance of occupy people to their occupy in your mind
AA we has been persecuted there has never been a more dang dous dealer of death than the American
Empire we destroyed Iraq we destroyed Afghanistan destroyed Palestine we are the Dutch star these
so-called leftists apparently have never read any books on the subject nor have they had any
conversation with actual weers and it is better for these people to have a red fascist than a blue
fascist the US elections are nearly upon us and we have all been subject to the EMP
words and rhetoric of the two main political parties the green party has gained a lot of
traction especially amongst the country's small but very important Muslim Community I've already
spoken to and interviewed the leader of the greens Dr Jill Stein but today I have the pleasure to
speak to Professor Butch Bilal we uh its Vice Presidential nominee Professor Butch wear is a
lifelong activist and educator specializing in the history of Empire colonialism genocide and
revolu ution for the past two decades Professor wear has put scholarship in service of the people
especially in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as the George Floyd murder in
2020 professor butam alayum and welcome to the thinking Muslim it's an honor and a privilege
I'm overdue I'm but glad I was able to make time in the midst of a busy campaign to get this in so it's great to talk to you no I really appreciate your time and I know you've probably
got a punishing schedule at the moment so jazak thank you so much for joining us precisely the
Embrace Islam at 15
yeah punishing it's punishing I I I watched a really great interview uh between you and the
Ansari on the Ansari podcast and I was surprised to hear that you had become Muslim at the age of
15 um before we begin with the politics and with you know the many questions I have about the green
party can I just ask you I mean it's very rare for someone to embrace Islam I think anyway at the age
of 15 like what brought you to Islam at that age yeah um so uh I read the autobiography of Malcolm
X um cover to cover in one night when I was 15 years old um and I I remember that night like
it was yesterday I mean I could not put that book down um you know Chang positions on my bed a few
times sat in the corner on the floor for a while but I read it cover to cover I couldn't put it down reread certain portions of it um I wanted what MTH had at the end of that book Malcolm
um like me had been in a lot of dark places in his life I was raised in uh extreme poverty um
very difficult circumstances in Washington DC my father had a sixth grade education my mother was
15 years old when she was pregnant with me was told by her high school guidance counselor to get an abortion um you know I I came in to this world under difficult circumstances as Malcolm
had um and what I saw in that book was that you know no matter how dark the places um you know
you might have uh seen uh may be that the light of God could find you there and lift you up to
the highest of all stations so I went to my school library the next day after not sleeping that night
and I checked out an English translation of the Quran wow um yeah and I read that cover to cover
the next night so I had stayed up you know for two consecutive nights without sleeping and I actually when I finished the Quran in Translation I fell asleep and missed my school bus and and slept
through school that day so you know nakum and and and and and the Quran made me a truant um but but
I hadn't taken my shahada before the end of the week I told my mom that day that I'm Muslim um and and that I and I looked up in the phone book for the where the nearest mosque was to go to go
make my shahada I had also got a couple of books that were like instructions on how to pray and how do you you just something simple I think that um it was one of U maud's books was actually also
at my public um you know library at that time I grabbed a copy of that and just learned the basics
we didn't have the internet back then so I had to look these things up in books um and yeah I I my
mom I told her I'm Muslim and um and I said I want to go you know make my shahada at this mosque and
she was like that's wonderful honey but gonna have to wait till the weekend because I have work you know so so we waited until the weekend and then we drove out um to the Islamic uh uh uh Islamic
Center in Fridley Minnesota I was living on uh in Minneapolis at that time I I made my Shada then
really wonderful to hear it's inspirational and and I want to pick up on the Malcolm X connection
Malcolm X and radicalism
there because um Malcolm X was a radical and he fused his radicalism with Islam and in many ways
Islam is a radical Faith uh it's it's a faith that requires us to call for justice uh and against all
the odds and so in many ways you know we are all responsible for speaking out against tyan
tyrannical rule oppression genocide is in the case of Gaza how important is that melding of
radicalism with Islam in in your philosophy for and for me so just to be clear reading those two
books uh consecutively on back-to-back Knights um they were a single argument for me right one was
an autobiographical narrative about how to triumph over both internal and external oppressors and
then the other was a universal narrative the Quran was a universal narrative about how to
triumph over internal and external oppressors and when I read the Quran even that first time
the the the Anti-Imperialist nature of the Quran the radical IM manatory liberatory message of the
Quran was apparent to me right because why well where do we find IIM face Toof face with Nimrod
the most powerful Emperor and Tyrant on the face of the Earth in his where do we find Moses and
Aaron M and Har we find them T toes down face to face with the most dangerous tyrants and Emperor
on the face of the Earth in their time where do we find Yahya where do we find ASA uh peace be upon
all of the prophets we find them being persecuted by the Roman Empire why because the people of God
always stand against the fundamental form of Oppression in their time that's what makes them
the people of God if you have genuine comp passion for the children of Adam um and in many ways the
quran's most radical argument is also its simplest right you are all the children of Adam and it is
from dirt that you were created your nobility lies in the Divine breath that is breathed into
you that caress that makes you right the human being is not made in the Quran just through a
simple Act of speech no God asked inad to why did you not bow to that which I made with my own hand
and then in two separate eyes of Quran God says and when I have fashioned it and breathed into it
of my spirit then fall down before it prostrate so the human being is this sacred creation um indeed
I enbl the children of Adam um so so uh for me the struggle to keep harm and oppression from reaching
the children of Adam that was wired into my understanding of the Quran from the beginning and
it was clear from Malcolm's experience that he was carrying forth that radical emancipatory Legacy in
his age last thing that I'll say in response to this people that don't know my academic work before I got pulled into politics um my scholarship is about the history of West African
Muslim Scholars who from the rise of the Atlantic slave trade itself also Drew on this emancipatory
um uh potential of Islam to struggle against the fundamental evils of the age right they organized
resistance to the r the Atlantic slave trade they organized resistance to um French to Dutch
to British Imperial occupation Spanish imperial occupation um the the these African Muslims like
an African-American Muslim like Malcolm or myself were people who read the Quran as as as a radical
Manifesto of resistance to white supremacy um and so in that respect um you know I I I I feel
quite comfortable in point of fact in this new position different from my academic life
because I feel like I've been tagged into a fight you know that that that Malcolm took up in his
time and that the great Scholars that I've written about in my work took up in their time um is your
Sufis and being radical
radicalism shared by many Muslims in the United States I mean I I note that I read somewhere and forgive me if I if I read it wrong but you are uh from a Sufi tradition or you Embrace a Sufi
tradition and in in a West African Sufi tradition and in uh the United States we associate a lot of
the time at least from the outside side uh Sufism uh with quietism with an apolitical Islam that
tends to be in cahoots with dictators and princes around the world um maybe I'm I'm exaggerating a
bit for effect here but um you know how does it's not a caricature by any means yeah go ahead right
no I I I just want to understand so how does your Sufism uh uh interact with your Islam
and your radicalism yeah I mean so for me so i' for people that have been knowing me you know as
an intellectual in the Muslim Community I've been trying to persuade people that Sufism isn't about you know uh polite middle class tea parties in the suburbs um and chanting di that the real Sufi
the people like um you know for example abdad jir Abdul Kad you know at age 19 he was crowned with
the ceremonial turban that made him the greatest living heir of adby in his time okay and at age
20 he was organizing armed resistance to the French occupation of Algeria right um Abdul Kad
Khan Kad Sufi himself in the 1770s um abolished not just the international slave trade as it was
being conducted in in the senar river valley but he abolished the institution of slavery itself
with a a an Emancipation Proclamation he said that that not a single verse of the book of God should
ever be held in bondage so that anyone capable of reciting so much as a single Ayah of the Quran
that was in his territories was to be immediately freed and just to be clear an ay of the Quran like
is an Ayah of the Quran and he he said he said that the Muslim that should be protected from the indignities of enslavement is the one that says even if she pronounces it in other words
he took the the legal exemption of Muslims enslaving other Muslims as a way of creating
a blanket emancipation Pro Kad Sufi right and I wrote about him in my in my first book the walkin
Quran shman Dano Kad Sufi also Northern Nigeria organized resistance to the Atlantic slave trade
elaj maral Tani Sufi organized resistance to French occupation sh Ahmed Amba creator of the
Tarik moradia spent 27 years of his life under house arrest because of his resistance to French
colonial rule so the Sufi tradition that I know is one that tethers together spirit uality with
social justice and it is a it is a Sufi tradition and this is important especially for this audience
to understand that it is a sober Sufi tradition it is a Sufi tradition that is rooted in Quran and
Sunnah and nothing else the idea behind the West African Sufi tradition is and always has been that
the traditional branches of the Islamic religious Sciences are three that we have um the and they
correspond to the Hadith of jel where the Prophet Alat was described to to was asked to describe
the contents of the religion Islam Iman for in response to Islam he named the five pillars in a
a response to uh to Iman he named six articles of Faith it's belief in God his books his angels his
Messengers decree and the hour and in response to the to question what isan he said it is worshiping
God as though seeing him and if you do not see him knowing that he sees you and the way that this has
been understood in a West African context is that this is to put a 24hour surveillance camera not on
your Deeds but on your intentions on why you do what you do um and that this is the the the the
path of asan and so these are Sufi Scholars who why they did what they did was to try to keep
needless harm and oppression from reaching the most precious thing that God created the children
of Adam now you're starting as VP of the green party and uh I've received the occasional message
Diluting radical tradition
I think it's it's uh uh it's certainly not in plurality but there's an occasional message I received from Muslims in America and elsewhere which suggests that in a sense what uh by joining
the green party and by uh fighting uh within the political process you're somewhat diluting that
radical tradition because it's a secular it's a corrupt political process and it's better
to fight from outside then join it fine you're not joining it by you know by embracing it but
you're joining it by fighting this election and how would you respond to accusations that somehow
you're watering down your radicalism yeah I mean it's a it's a wonderful question so was Malcolm watering down his radicalism when he created the organization for afroamerican Unity an explicitly
political organization no he was not was huie P Newton founder of the Black Panthers um watering
down his radicalism when he ran for elected office not once but twice was huie P Newton some kind of
sell out was quame T stokeley carmichel um a sellout when he advocated for organizing what
what quami Tor said and by the way people don't know that stokeley carmichel petor was a direct student of of of Malcolm X Malcolm said we are not outnumbered we are out organized Malcolm
argued explicitly for political organization as the basis of empowerment um for black people for
Muslims for all colonized people and he was a supporter of those political movements that
embodied that so what stoley carmichel did with this U with Malcolm's insights about organizing
he said people usually mobilize around issues but revolutionaries organize against systems let me
repeat that people usually mobilize around issues revolutionaries organized against systems so as a
historian myself it is claim that successful modern revolutions always contain a kernel
of political party organizing within them and the reason is is that no party is bigger than
the movement the movement is bigger than any party but political parties allow um movement
energy to be galvanized towards organizational and institutional expression it allows you to leverage
power and you mentioned in the introduction that the first time I got on social media is true I
didn't have an open a social media account before George Floyd was murdered um you know so the hund 40 whatever thousand followers on Instagram that's all since you know since 2020 well what
happened in 2020 there was a mobilization around an issue and it swept the whole globe whole globe
but no organizing against the system so then what happened the system responded to the fact
that this was a moment and not a movement by more repression than before so police have killed more
people in every subsequent year 2021 2022 2023 now 2024 they're they kill more people every year
and now the cops that used to just beat up people like me and by the way I was stopped for driving W
black never ticketed 17 times before I reached my 18th birthday an officer drew his service weapon
and pointed it at my face on 36th and 10th on the south side of Minneapolis a few blocks away from
where George Floyd would eventually be choked a couple decades later so I know the carceral state
uphand on my own flesh and the reality is is that people did not organize against the system so now
the brutality that used to be exercised just against people like me is now being extended to middle class kids on college campuses right because this police state is now defending the
Imperial fascists abroad with Imperial fascism at home so so what do we think is going to
happen as Muslims in this moment where Gaza has people on fire if do not have an organizational
institutional structure for our resistance when these white liberals stop seeing babies blowing
up on their phones do you think that they're going to be interested in divesting from the apartheid state or Palestinian Liberation no so we need to In This Moment organize for maximal
political power and that means uh yes you take electoral Avenues but it also means that you
do not foreclose on non electoral Avenues such as direct action boycotting divesting and sanctioning
and of course as is plain I have made it plain I I said this in an interview on Middle East eye
we never condemn the resistance of occupied people to their occupi somebody asked me um
uh um uh uh how would Malcolm have responded you know to to our current moment I said we know how
he would have answered the question do you condemn Hamas we know how Malcolm would have answered that
and and and I'll just you know make my position plain I have said at countless times that that
resistance on the part of occupied people that that's enshrined uh as a right in international
law our obligations go beyond this because um we are it is not a right to resist um occupation it
is a responsibility to resist occupation you are not permitted in our Dean to have someone
if someone wants to enter your home and kidnap or violate your family members you are not allowed
to just say um I have a right to resist but I'm going to forego that right to resist you have a
responsibility to resist and the the jurist the the scholars understood this so that they were
they only considered themselves absolved of that responsibility if certain formal requirements were
met if you were outnumbered more than two to one on the field of battle or if casualty ratios were
in that then you had an option where you could sue for peace or negotiate but below that threshold
you are required to resist now that's really really good to hear actually it's really um
Green Party and Liberals
reassuring to hear I uh I was speaking to a friend of mine he's a historian and uh he said something
to me he said that but wear is too radical for the green party um think otherwise go ahead yeah well
we we've got an equivalent we've got the we've got a green party I know they're not connected we've got a green party here and uh I spoke to a Muslim who's a member of the green party and he
said you know it's full of uh you know well-to-do uh well healed white liberals who tend to not want
controversy uh how much is the green party at the moment restraining your radicalism in no way is
the green party restraining my radicalism when they when they made this invitation I said you
guys do know who I yeah I said I said listen I'm going to give you 24 hours to reconsider
this offer I need y'all to go ahead and run as much tape on me as you can um and you know good
friend of mine hus jafer I did Instagram live live with them you know also uh you know a UK guy um
he he he said you know we thought that when you got pulled into the politics we were suspicious because we thought you might mellow out and I'm like mellow out what like what what would I look
like you know uh you know trying to embody the the legacy of Malcolm if I now turned around and and mellowed out so the first thing to say is that is that when I said this I said you guys better run
tape on me they were like the campaign manager Jason call um Jill St he said he said no we know
that's why we brought you on the campaign and Jill Jill said Jill Stein said absolutely and so Jill
has been you know like um you know completely locks up and she also said if there are places
where our platform does not go far enough then you let us know right so they've been open to you know
to to to being responsive both to the concerns of the Muslims and to the concerns of those of
us who are you know committed Anti-Imperialist I just have to say Dr Jill Stein is a committed Anti-Imperialist like in the best radical tradition I think that that the way the only
way that I would argue um so I don't know about the green party in the UK but the green party in
in the United States has almost no liberals in it um it has a lot of white progressives it has
a lot of white um environmentalists white radicals the the older generation of green party leadership
you know I think you know still reflects that demographically but politically it's not a party that has liberals in it um so that part we haven't had to do a lot of house cleaning in that in that
respect because we know what Malcolm said you know about white liberals Malcolm said that the white liberal is a is a is a fox um you know that it that it Hunts by guile and cunning it Bears its
teeth and you think that it's smiling but you are on the menu um so we have not had you know too many uh you know liberals white or otherwise to deal with in the green party so the green party
has has really embraced um you know and and and has been willing to be pushed um and and
just to be clear like the green party has run on a platform of reparations for the black community since 2012 the green party has run on a platform of full Liberation divestment um you know uh from
from the aparte state in uh in in Palestine since 2006 um so so with respect to these major policy
you know points of both domestic and um you know foreign policy um I I was actually surprised
myself when you know because I knew about the green party uh growing up um one of my closest
friends was a green party elected official in the City of Minneapolis so I knew about its local politics I did not understand the extent to which the green party was already standing at The
Cutting Edge of Anti-Imperialist work that's really really reassuring to hear again um so
Green’s and social issues
let's talk a little bit about uh the green party and the Muslim vote at at present um I think it's
fair to say that you have captured the majority of Muslims it seems to me at least the active Muslims
uh and I anecdotally I'm just picking that up for conversations I'm having through comments on my videos through uh through various means it just seems like Muslims are moving in the green
Direction and we'll be voting green uh I do often get uh a response from Muslims who are voting
green that they're ready to do so but they don't agree with all of the policy platforms of the
green party and they tend to site more often than not the social platform of of the green parties
can you address that for me please yeah yeah definitely I mean so so I had similar questions until I read the platform and that's that's when I realized that that that we didn't have a problem
so so the first thing that I'll say before I get to the question of social issues is to talk about
how consonant the green party platform already was with core Islamic ethical and spiritual values so
at the end at the bottom of every poster you know Green Party will say people Planet peace right and
the the formal platform of the green party since its foundation 40 years ago mallister College 1984
in in uh in in minneap in Minnesota um you know next to my hometown second Hometown in Minneapolis
was to they literally described themselves as stewards of these three things things the
people the planet and the peace now in my online community spiritual intensives where I've taught
from the West African uh Sufi tradition about how to tether together spirituality and social justice
I have been teaching for the last four years without having any awareness of the green party platform about the notion of KFA stewardship in Islam and the principal things that we are uh uh
uh question about our custodianship these things are the rights of the people the sanctity of human
life the sanctity of the rights of human beings the planet like the the the Abomination that is
the Saudi State we can talk about that in another you know uh uh place um but all of these you know
Gulf polluters have been you know um what's the word um disavowing this fundamental responsibility
that Muslims have to be stewards of our shared home as human beings our natural environment
and especially as stewards of the peace and what because what we have is essentially the
United States Empire which is the most dangerous Imperium ever to exist in human history I mean if
we talked about Nimrod and pharaoh and the Roman emperors they would have all wet themselves at
the prospect of surveillance capacity and death dealing capacity that the American Empire wakes
up with every morning so so just to be clear um our responsibility our values as Muslims are first
and foremost to be stewards of these three and those are precisely the core values of the green party so at the highest of levels there is direct consonant now with respect to the question that
you asked about social issues and this is where I think people have a huge number of misconceptions
in part because the green party is usually uh thought of as a party that is to the left of the
Democrats to the left of Team blue and therefore thought of as on social issues then also being to
the left of of Team blue whereas in point of fact the green party has played precisely no role of
any kind in the culture war between liberals and conservatives as it has unfolded over the last
30 plus years in American politics you can just look that up we're not there having an argument
about lgbtq rights versus religious rights and the reason is is that the basic principle of
the green party is that at age 18 when a a person that has political maturity in the United States
of America they can live their life by whatever code they choose to live their life by and there
is not a moral argument that you are supposed to be you know um accepting the way that someone else
chooses to live their life as a core tenant of your value as a human being Muslims should choose
to live their life by the code that they choose Christians should choose the Life by the code that they choose atheists agnostics whoever that is and that the role of of an actual uh de uh democracy
the leadership in an actual Dem democracy is not to stoke Warfare in order to site fear between
people that choose to live their lives differently but is to create a safe space in the public
environment for everybody's choices on how they live their life to be respected and for no one
to get prejudicial treatment one way or the other and when I want to put a fine point on this to the musl Muslim Community I just often point out that from from the standpoint of you know uh of certain
secular humanists right there is a demonization of the institution of polygamy correct it it can be
represented from their standpoint as deviants they can frame it however they want the green party um
is there to protect the rights of people who will live by whatever code that they have chosen for
themselves and to not impose that on other people so when Muslims sometimes get exercised about lgbtq issues I remind them of a few simple facts the first is is that non-muslims are not required
to live by the Sharia of Islam so what non-muslims do in their bedrooms is none of our damn business
that's number one two no sin puts a believing person outside the fold of Islam therefore if
you are a person um who constructs um homosexual uh Behavior as a sin according to the tradition
kind of Juris Prudential rulings of Islam and I'll be blunt about this I will be explicit about this
is that I have never come ac across a plausible juristic ruling that suggests that the sin of
the people of lot is anything other than what we presume it to be but at the same time as all of my
teachers my West African teachers have taught me no sin puts a believing person outside the fold of
Islam therefore it is not our position to chase such people away or any other such thing rather
it is to create an environment that that Fosters safety for for all so mus non-muslims are not a
problem and now the Muslims are also not a problem so then the question becomes do you want the state
probing into your private bedroom Affairs in your polygamous household or in your monogamous
household for that matter well then stay out of other folks bedrooms too that that is the basic
you know position and when you understand that the green party has played no role in stoking
this culture War you realize that you are actually being a given a vehicle that allows you better
expression of your values and ethics as a Muslim and more importantly a vice presidential candidate
that has sat with Scholars I do not advertise this this fact but I have traditional authorizations
from Scholars for texts I don't run on that basis that's not the basis on which I would
govern but the point is is what is better to have someone in a position of power that is capable of
understanding and defending Muslim sensibilities or to have someone who uh in in power who has
no even awareness of the intricacies of those I know that not everyone is going to have the same
understandings of you know Islamic jurist Prudence that I have been trained with both as an academic
and as a as a student of knowledge but the prophet Alam is reported to have said dis agreement in my
um is a mercy from God so I'm there to defend those that might see things otherwise and to
create a public space wherein the rights of all people of faith and people of conscience
are respected um and to contribute in no way to this toxic environment of a culture War and the
last thing that I'll say on that is that so many Muslims do not understand the way the extent to
which their Consciousness has been poisoned by right-wing rhetoric yeah that's I think that's a
Uyghurs and foreign policy
really comprehensive answer jazak thank you for for answering it in in that way can I then ask you
about foreign policy positions now you said that Jill Stein and the green party have a very strong
Anti-Imperialist uh history and they take very strong positions on on imperialism in particular
American imperialism but does that commitment to be Anti-Imperialist and anti-American foreign
policy or anti-empire does that commitment come at the cost of sometimes siding with
groups and countries who are persecuting Muslims I mean I I think I got a satisfactory answer on
the Syria question from Joe Stein but the oers I mean there was a an interview that went around of
course Medi Hassan sent it around because it it it uh it corroborates his agenda his pro-democratic
agenda for sure but nevertheless his Pro his Pro he Med Med Hassan believes that you that you can
oppose a genocide and support the genocider which is which is which is a kind of Madness that I
have no ability to Fathom but go ahead continue sorry yeah no no I I I completely agree but it's
illogical completely illogical bu